THIS IS THE NEW M*TH!Christian Bokhove

January 20th 2018

ResearchEd Amsterdam

Who am I ?

• Christian Bokhove

• From 1998-2012 teacher maths and computer science,

secondary school Netherlands

• PhD from Utrecht University

• Lecturer at University of

Southampton

• Maths education

• Large-scale assessment

• Research Methods

• Computer Science stuff

Purpose and disclaimers

• We run the risk of creating more myths while challenging

myths

• I want to frame myths and mechanisms first

• …and then give some examples I encountered in media

• ,,,,chose those you probably agree with most

• … don’t make the mistake of thinking because I’m critical of A I’m

against A or trying to debunk A.

• Not meant as exhaustive review of the research

• Tried to add most of the references at the end

• Ironically, a presentation like this simplifies, which is a risk

in communicating concepts and ideas

WHAT CAN WE SAY

ABOUT MYTHS

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/myth

Howard-Jones (2014)

“In 2002, the Brain and Learning project of the UK’s

Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) drew attention to the many misconceptions about

the mind and brain that arise outside of the medical and

scientific communities.” (Howard-Jones, 2014, p. 817)

Myths begin

“examples of cases in which entrepreneurs have knowingly

set out to mislead educators are difficult to find.” (Howard-

Jones, 2014, p. 817)

“more likely that such interventions originate from

uninformed interpretations of genuine scientific facts

and are promoted by victims of their own wishful thinking

who hold a “sincere but deluded fixation on some eccentric

theory that the holder is absolutely sure will revolutionize

science and society” (Howard-Jones, 2014, p. 817)

Perpetuated

• Cultural conditions e.g. differences in terminology and language• Also check Lilienfeld et al.

(2015, 2017) for lists with psychological terms to avoid and pairs of confusion

• Counter-evidence difficult to access

• Untestable

• Biases

• Complex

Macdonald et al. (2017)

Rekdal (2014)

• Case example of

urban legend spinach

and iron

• Not significantly more

iron

• Not first food if iron

deficient

• ‘The truth is too simple’

‘The truth is too simple’

• What if I read Larsson and what to ‘pass on’ this snippet of

knowledge ?

• Larsson cited Hamblin (1981)

• Treasure hunt

• Can add more references but sometimes back to one

source

Hamblin (1981)

But the decimal point claim has no reference.

Irony

Larsson and Hamblin frontline of the fight against bad

science and academic carelessness.

Sutton (2010) argued other possible causes.

Pointed to another person, Bender etc etc

Hamblin to Sutton on his website

“Follies and fallacies in medicine”

Robin-Garcia et al. (2017)

• Dentistry

• “tweeting about scholarly

articles represents curating and

informing about state-of-the-art

appears not to be realized in

practice.”

• “Simplistic and naïve use of

social media data risks

damaging the scientific

enterprise, misleading both

authors and consumers of

scientific literature.”

• (Now check the paper, it says

much more, and it has its own

limitations)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201709/the-pitfalls-popularizing-new-science?amp

“At the same time, I think that there are real dangers in popularizing science. One danger comes from oversimplifying core concepts where people may come to believe they understand a key concept better than they actually do. A potentially bigger danger comes from overhyping new science.”

“When scientists want to make recommendations for how people might live their lives differently based on studies, then, we ought to wait about 15 years before giving those recommendations. Otherwise, we run the risk of giving bad advice that we have to walk back later. Having to take back our advice can undermine the public’s faith in the science.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201709/the-pitfalls-popularizing-new-science?amp

SOME EXAMPLES

https://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/disruptive-kids-can-cost-classmates-a-lot/18494

Carrell et al. (2016)

• Glances over peer disruption v domestic violence

• Economics paper: stats methods, sig testing with

10% w/ large N

• Most importantly: reported vs unreported

https://bokhove.net/2016/06/29/unpicking-economic-papers-a-paper-on-behaviour/

Seductive allure

• Popular papers e.g. McCabe & Castel (2008)

• Farah & Hook (2013) “little empirical support for the claim

that brain images are inordinately influential.”

• “an alternative explanation is that this effect is

representative of a more general bias in judging

explanations.” (Hopkins et al., 2016, p. 67)

Cognitive Load Theory

• A good summary of Cognitive Load Theoryappeared just recently

• Does not contain recent insight for example role germane load (schemas), and different ‘schools of thought’.

• Mentions limitations but in my opinion underplaying what it means

New South Wales Centre for Education and Statistics

Rest of slide Intentionally left blank to not impose too much load.

Scale originates from Paas (1992)

Or in my opinion

over-state what

research in the

CLT domain says

For example

expertise reversal

(which also

happened in own

research)

“no place”

Case of France (Loi-Jospin)

• Hirsch says: inequality increased

• Careful when interpreting

• When dive deeper behind the

(French) data

• Some categories seem to miss

• A new edition, not known at time

writing, shows gaps stable

• Take-away message: ideally,

trace down origins, update and

monitor your ideas.https://bokhove.net/2017/04/26/the-case-of-france/

Dismiss the ‘classics’ ?

• Discard Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Bloom ?

• No, empirical advances mean we now know more ?

• But ideas still relevant ?

• I compare this with for example Newton: respect but not for his

pseudoscience and Leibniz’s integral notation got more traction’

• Vygotsky’s “not too easy not too hard”: optimise and

manage ‘load’?

• Concreteness fading (Bruner)

• Scaffolding, guidance (Renkl)

• Types of knowledge (Bloom)

• Conflict (Kapur)

CONCLUSION

• Follow-up sources

• But… it can be very time-consuming

• Read, read and read (and sometimes refrain from a position

until read up a bit). Science is incremental.

• Beware of over-simplifications

• Note that fact some over-complicate things, does not mean ‘simple is

best’.

• Nuance is ok, and not ‘evading debate’.

• Willingham (2017):

Key word: ‘mislead’

But challenging some

of the WM claims:

Oberauer et al. (2016)

on causes, and

Bays (2018)

• 15yr rule might be a bit too much but add scope and

disclaimers to claims.

• Educate, e.g. “These results suggest that further training

in science may help people to better understand what

makes something a good explanation, possibly mitigating

the reductive allure effect.” (Hopkins et al., 2016, p. 75)

• Accept ‘a lesser form of knowledge’ (Labaree, 1998)

@cbokhove

Maybe of interest: this podcast

Selected referencesBays, P.M. (2018). Reassessing the Evidence for Capacity Limits in Neural Signals Related to Working Memory. Cerebral Cortex, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhx351

Carrell, S E, M Hoekstra and E Kuka (2016) “The long-run effects of disruptive peers”, NBER Working Paper 22042. link.

Farah, M.J., & Hook, C.J. (2013). The Seductive Allure of “Seductive Allure”. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(1), 88-90.

Hopkins, E.J., Weisberg, D.S., & Taylor, J.C.V. (2016). The seductive allure is a reductive allure: People prefer scientific explanations that contain logically irrelevant reductive information. Cognition, 155, 67-76.

Howard-Jones, P. (2014). Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(12), 817-824.

Labaree, D.F. (1998). Educational researchers: Living with a lesser form of knowledge. Educational Researcher, 27(8), 4-12.

Lilienfeld, S.O., Pydych, A.L., Lynn, S.J., Latzman, R.D., & Waldman, I.D. (2017). 50 Differences that make a difference: A compendium of frequently confused term pairs in psychology. Frontiers in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00037

Lilienfeld, S.O., Sauvigné, K.C., Lynn, S.J., Cautin, R.L., Latzman, R.D., & Waldman, I.D. (2015). Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases. Frontiers in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01100

Macdonald, K., Germine, L., Anderson, A., Christodoulou, J., & McGrath, L.M. (2017). Dispelling the myth: Training in education or neuroscience decreases but does not eliminate beliefs in neuromyths, Frontiers in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01314

McCabe, D.P., & Castel, A.D. (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343-352.

Oberauer, K., Farrell, S., Jarrold, C., & Lewandowsky, S. (2016). What limits working memory capacity? Psychological Bulletin, 142(7), 758-799.

Paas, F. (1992). Training strategies for attaining transfer of problem-solving skill in statistics: A cognitive-load approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(4), 429-434.

Rekdal, O.B. (2014). Academic urban legends. Social Studies of Science, 44(4), 638-654.

Robinson-Garcia, N., Costas, R., Isett, K., Melkers, J., & Hicks, D. (2017). The unbearable emptiness of tweeting—About journal articles. PLOS one. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183551

Willingham, D.T. (2017). A mental model of the learner: Teaching the basic science of educational psychology to future teachers. Mind, Brain and Education, 11(4), 166-175.